


Second-Hand

by Polly_Lynn



Category: Castle
Genre: Awkward Crush, Awkward Flirting, Crushes, F/M, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 22:44:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7408177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s glad he came. Even with a not-so-thinly-veiled death threat drifting down the hall behind her. Even though she’s going, and he’s doomed to a night on her pretty terrible couch, at least he's doomed on the right side of the door. So he settles back with his double glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape and decides he's glad he came.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Insert for Tick, Tick, Tick (2 x 17)

He’s glad he came. Even with a not-so-thinly-veiled death threat drifting down the hall behind her. Even though she’s going, and he’s doomed to a night on her pretty terrible couch, at least he's doomed on the right side of the door. So he settles back with his double glass of _Châteauneuf-du-Pape_ and decides he's glad he came. 

He sips carefully and lets his gaze wander, coming to rest here and there. He lets himself drink in the minutiae of this private world of hers. Pats himself on the back when something dovetails with the Gramercy Park place he's built for Nikki and curses when he hits on the inevitable detail he got completely wrong.  

But he leaves Nikki behind entirely before too long. Leaves behind even the pretense of research, because he's interested in _her_. He's fundamentally, increasingly, bordering-on-alarmingly interested in all things Kate Beckett. 

He sips less carefully and admits it to himself. That he's glad he came, and not just for the opportunity to snoop it's afforded him. Not even just because it's turned out to be a particularly golden opportunity to pull her pigtails.  

He's glad they've . . . made up. Not that he really knew they were fighting. Not that he's sure even now that _fighting_ is the right word for it, but he's glad.  

He'd come to her door with a bottle of wine and some pretty vague intentions. He'd let fear and a fuzzy kind of guilt drive him from home to here, and things are clearer now. She doesn't want him building theory with Jordan Shaw, and she said it in her outside-her-head voice. She's a little jealous, and that's more than a little gratifying, even if it's professional. Maybe _because_ it's professional, though he suspects it's not that simple. 

He suspects nothing about the two of them is quite that simple, and even so, coming here was the right thing to do. He'd told her the truth. Told her that he's sorry for putting her on some psycho's radar, and whether or not that's reasonable, she'd let him stay. She'd accepted the gesture, however grumpily, and it feels like they've cleared the air. 

He's glad. He takes a last sip of the wine, then sets it aside with a heathy portion still sloshing around. He settles back into her pretty terrible couch and drifts off, thinking how glad he is that he came. 

* * *

 

He dreams. Strangely, given the circumstances. Happily. 

He's pulled deep into pleasant memory. True things weaving in and out of the fanciful stuff his mind makes of the last few days' goings on, mundane and terrible alike. He dreams of Alexis and a carousel pony, but not a carousel pony. Of himself crawling around on all fours with long ribbons slipped over his ears and another riding the slope of his nose. He dreams of his daughter, years ago—a decade or more—calling him Declan and yelling _giddy up!_ Sitting on his back and digging her heels into his ribs.

He dreams of her swaddled in a robe of his, her nose pink and raw with a cold. He hears himself reading to her endlessly, but the thick covers of the board book enclose the case file. Terrible details, all too few of them, and now Beckett’s sitting cross-legged nearby on a couch he hates as he lounges back against a pile of pillows, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles.  

He dreams of rough fabric chafing his cheek. Paper sticking to his skin and leaving behind words in reverse. Ciphers that baffle him as he wakes in the middle of the night with a pen still in his hand and remembers he was supposed to be writing. He dreams of his back and hips and everything hurting _exactly_ like this because he'd fallen asleep on the damned couch again. 

He dreams, and then he's not dreaming. He's on his knees, muzzy-headed and sure of something, though not what or how or why it matters.  Not at all sure where he is, other than clawing at cushions. Digging his fingers for these weird corner straps that buckle the damned thing on and he has no idea how he knows that. _Why_ he would know that, when his waking mind still hasn't caught up with where he even is. 

Something thumps and rolls, thick carpet to hardwood. It rings out, and something else winds up under his knee. He jerks it clumsily free and throws it aside. He levers up the cushion, but only one side is free, and it's not there. The thing he's looking for. It's not there and the ache in his spine insists it ought to be, whatever it is.  

_The other cushion._

It's wrong, but it's right. It's a possibility. His fingers work slowly. Sloppily, and it's maddening, but he has one corner of the other cushion up, and there it is. A hot pink Rorschach blot he'd know anywhere. One he knows here, wherever _here_ is in the middle of the night.

_"Castle!"_

He spins around at the sound of her voice. Falls on his butt and cracks the back of his head on the hard wooden frame of the stupid, shitty couch he's always hated.  

"Castle, what . . . " She crosses the room. Picks up the rolling wine glass and an errant shoe along the way. She looks down at him, incredulous, and well she might be. "What the hell are you, doing?" 

"What are _you_ doing?" he shoots back as the unlikely pieces of the puzzle slot into place. Where he is. Why he's here and what he's just found. "What the hell are you doing with my couch, Beckett?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But it’s . . . that’s . . .” She drops on to the couch in question, holding a matching throw pillow out from her body like it might explode. “How can it be your couch?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second chapter. A Tick, Tick, Tick insert (2 x 17)

 

“But it’s . . . that’s . . .” She drops on to the couch in question, holding a matching throw pillow out from her body like it might explode. “How can it be your couch?” 

“I don’t know.” He grunts as he shifts his hips, trying to force the cushion well and truly back into place. “But barring the possibility we’re in the middle of some made-for-TV scifi movie where that nail polish stain marks a portal to some other plane of the multiverse, this is”—he grimaces, shifting again as he tries to work out the all-too-familiar kinks—“ _was_ my couch.”  

“But . . .” she looks baffled. Sleepy, and she must be. She blinks at him. “But it’s my couch.” 

 “Now it is. But how . .. ” He scowls at the arm. Runs his fingers over the place where the stitching never did lay flat. “Roadkill!” he blurts. He turns to her, open-mouthed. “Oh my God, Beckett, this is _roadkill_.” 

“It is _not!”_ she hisses as she draws her knees to her chest.

“It _is!”_ He jerks his hands up, not wanting to touch it, suddenly, however little sense that makes. “You got this off the _curb.”_

“I did _not,”_ she insists, but she’s shoving the pillow on the far side of her like she can hide it. Like she needs to all of a sudden, and he can see her mind working backward. He sees realization dawn. “ _I_ didn’t . . .” She looks queasy. 

“Well someone did.” He pounds the cushion like the pink stain beneath might offer testimony. “Someone you lived with went dumpster hunting and bagged _this_ thing.”    

"Thing?" She makes a face at the upholstery. "You're the one who paid money for it. Or ‘someone you lived with’.” She’s making fun of him. Dropping her voice in wildly unflattering imitation that makes him laugh, but something strikes her. The odd, not-quite-floral pattern. The color scheme. The timeline, maybe. "Oh, _God,_ Castle. Is this from the deep-fried Twinkie collection?" 

“Meredith?” he snaps. The name is sour in his mouth. Strange, but he doesn’t want his ex-wife here. Vehemently doesn’t want even the slightest mention of her. “No."  

The sharpness of his voice makes her shoulders slump for just a fraction of a second. An odd role reversal, him shutting down and her retreating, but it doesn’t last a second before she's bristling. Straightening up and going again. Kicking him out this time, maybe, and he doesn't want that. He wants what it was like thirty seconds ago when this was strange and a little bit funny. He wants two hours ago when she was threatening his life, but mostly didn't mean it.

He wants them to make up again.

"This was . . . post–Meredith." He hauls a pillow out from behind his back. Hides and confesses all at the same time. "Kind of _pointedly_ post-Meredith. She finally moved to LA. Alexis and I moved into the loft. New place. New furniture. New everything." 

“New nail polish habit?” She peers over at him, like his fingers might end in bright pink ovals, even now.  

“Alexis.” He plucks at the fabric. “My mother, I guess? Or maybe something Meredith left. She went through a hyper-girly phase right around then. Acted up a lot.” He checks himself. Thinks about the families he’s seen over the last year. “For Alexis values of ‘acting up’.”   

She shoots him a look from beneath her lashes. Sympathy, though it’s not what he was bracing for. He bites the inside of cheek. He doesn’t want to be bracing for anything. Not with her, and he thinks—suspects lately, anyway—this is how she must feel with him. Wanting to tell. Not wanting anyone to know, so he soldiers on.  

“She wasn’t supposed to have the stuff out of the bathroom. She got the cushions off somehow and tried to flip them.” A smile surfaces, even though this is weird. Even though he’s not sure he’s a fan of how the tables have turned. “Tried to hide it for, like, ten seconds before she came running to confess.”

“Confess,” she snorts. “You sure she’s . . .” She pulls up short, not quite in time. Her hand makes a move toward him. A mortified apology that dies on the vine. 

“Mine?” he finishes, and it’s not as bitter as either of them thought it might be. “Well.” He catches her eye, not quite smiling, but it’s ok. “Me. Meredith. Where Alexis gets any of her good qualities?” He shakes his head. “A mystery.” 

“Not a mystery,” she says quietly. Instantly, and it leaves him speechless. Her cheeks burn and the floor draws her eyes down and he’s absolutely speechless. “So.” She clears her throat a little too loudly. “Gotta be more to the story, though. One nail polish stain and you toss the whole couch?”

“Any excuse,” he scoffs. That’s too loud, too, but he’s clamping down hard on a smile. A big, stupid smile that’s too much. That’s sure to end this off-center, domestic little moment they’ve stumbled into.  “Any excuse to get rid of the damned thing. Obviously."

"Obviously?" She gives him an over-the-top frown. A crooked smile lurking just behind it. "You're dissing my couch now, Castle?"

"It's a terrible couch, Beckett." He gives her a frown in kind. A smile that's hardly lurking at all. "It was terrible _before_ God knows what nested in it on the streets of New York." 

"Nothing _nested_ in it." 

She's full-out laughing now. Trying to scowl and messing it up entirely, though there's still something tight around the edges. Something unhappy, and he has to pull his hand back. He has to tamp down the instinct  to touch her. To soothe it away. 

Her chin tips forward, her voice low enough that he has to lean in to catch the words. 

"I don't remember his name." She shakes her head. Catches up with herself. With how it sounds. "He wasn't . . ." She breaks off. Manages a real scowl this time, though it's one he thinks she regrets. One that gives away more than she'd like. "Not a boyfriend. Just a roommate."  

"A roommate," he repeats.  

It's instinct, but he's sorry for it. Sorry it sounds like he's prompting. Sorry that he _wants_ to prompt when he thinks about where she must have been in her life. Where he was in his.  

"I couldn't . . . I was broke. Transferring back from Stanford. I was behind in school, and . . ." She darts a sideways look at him. Her fingers come to rest on her bare wrist. The bare patch of skin where her watch isn't. She catches a breath, like she's just remembered he knows this. Some of it, anyway. "It wasn't a good idea for me and my dad to be sharing space just then." 

"So you moved in with my couch." 

That’s instinct, too. A smart-ass comment he'd give a lot to bite back, because he wants her to keep talking. He wants to know absolutely everything she wants to tell him, and it's just the kind of thing that's likely to have her shutting down. So likely that he opens his mouth to apologize, but she's not shutting down. She's going on, like she wants him to know as much as he wants to hear.

"Moved in." She's staring into the middle distance. Trying to remember, and he holds his breath. Bites his tongue. "Or maybe it showed up after?" She tags it with a question mark. Looks to him, like he might know, and he wishes he did. He wishes he had whatever answers she might be looking for. "I remember the way the place echoed and sleeping on a pallet half in a closet. Not much else. I don't even know how I was the one to end up with this." She lets one hand drift over the rough expanse of the cushion. "That year . . . I don't remember much else."  

"I don't blame you," he says quietly. "I can't imagine, Beckett." 

She smiles down at her own knees. At him, a second later with another sideways look. A little wicked this time. "Bad news for you."  

"Bad news?" he echoes. Instinct a third time that makes him sound exactly like the fool he is. 

"Isn't that your job?" She scans the room. Lets her gaze wander just as his did, not too many hours ago. "To _imagine_ my life?"

It's her parting shot. She's pushing to her feet. Going again, and he doesn't even know why she was up. If he woke her or maybe she wanted a glass of wine, after all. She's going, and he doesn't want her to. 

"He wasn't a boyfriend." He blurts it out. The very first thing he can think of that isn't just begging her not to go. It's not a big improvement, but he's in it now. He's muscling forward, joking when he's really not. "The dumpster diver."

"Not a boyfriend," she says over her shoulder. She's halfway to the hall. "Not that it's any of your business."

He ignores the second part. Steps on the inevitable line as he rushes in. 

 ". . . and  it's post–Meredith, and Alexis was really little, so . . ." 

He trails off with an extravagant arch of his eyebrows. Gives her a look that's full of over-the-top meaning, but his heart is pounding. 

"So?" She rubs her eyes. Plays it up like she's exasperated. But she's not going anywhere. "Your point?" 

"My point," he drawls, kicking back to fold his arms behind his head, "is that it's a pretty terrible couch, but even still, it hasn't seen nearly as much action as it should have." 

She blushes. She startles, her eyes going wide, and she actually _blushes_ before she remembers to glare. Before she turns on her heel and remembers she was going.  She stops. Out of sight, but there's the squeal of something and he pictures her with her hand on the doorknob. Hesitating, and his heart pounds. 

"Just so you know," she calls out, her voice not quite as stern—not quite as . . . unaffected—as he thinks she means it to be, "nothing's changed in the last two hours. I still sleep with a gun." 

"Just so _you_ know . . . " He stretches out, resigned to a night on her pretty terrible couch. _Their_ pretty terrible couch. He smiles as his eyes slip closed. "I still don't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it. Dumb idea. But thanks for reading.

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure why Brain ran with this. It's very dumb. Second chapter up later today or tomorrow.


End file.
